Drive

by Diana Wieler

  Daniel’s back was to me but I could see him wilt. “Well…yeah. Okay. Maybe next time.”

  He turned for the door, his face pale from the strain.

  I caught him by the shoulders. I’d been determined to let him fail but I couldn’t stand it.

  “Whose birthday is it?” I called.

  The three at the bar looked back, faintly surprised that we hadn’t left yet. Finally the second man cleared his throat.

  “Jake Reimer. He’s my uncle.”

  I headed toward them casually, my arm still on Daniel’s back as I pushed him along with me. “Did I hear you say he’s eighty-five? He must be one of the original homesteaders.”

  “The same year as the railroad,” the man said proudly.

  “We try to do that in Ile-des-Sapins, too,” I said. “Celebrate the people who really built the town. It’s easy to forget them sometimes.”

  “You’re from Ile-des-Sapins?” the farmer said. The name was on his lips like a password. It was a small town, like their own.

  “Yes, sir.” I was close enough now, and I put my hand out to him. “Jens Friesen, and this is my brother, Daniel.”

  “Friesen!” the woman exclaimed. “Any relation to Dietrich and Mary? They’re over in Sunnyhill.”

  This was a touchy point. I knew for a fact that my dad’s relatives had moved to Saskatchewan.

  I grinned. “Probably. There are so many of us, I’m sure we’re all related somehow. ’Them that ain’t Friesen is Froese.’”

  It was an old joke but they grinned anyway, liked it better, maybe, because they had heard it so many times.

  Daniel shifted restlessly. I knew he couldn’t understand why I was still talking to these people; they’d already said no. I touched the back of his jacket again, telling him to wait.

  I slid onto one of the bar stools. “So, what are you going to do for Jake?” I asked.

  Not enough, according to his nephew. The birthday had been remembered at the last minute and the three of them were scrambling for ideas to make the old man’s regular Saturday night trip to the Legion a bit festive.

  “Well, it’s lucky we got here today, then,” I said. I told them my brother was a recording artist and we were traveling through the province promoting his debut release. It was the truth, only stretched out and shaped a bit.

  “Recording artist? He looks just like my Kurt when he was in high school. You remember how skinny he was,” the woman said to the farmer.

  Daniel’s muscles tensed, his chin went up. He was ready to leave right then. I started slapping my jacket pockets.

  “You know, I meant to bring you in a tape, but I must have forgotten it. Daniel, run out to the truck and get one, please?”

  He gave me a look — he was finished with these people. But he strode out anyway. As soon as the door shut, I leaned forward.

  “His producers are really excited about him, his talent,” I said in a low Voice. My audience leaned in, too. “But he’s so young. That’s why we’re building the exposure slowly, at a grass roots level.”

  The farmer arched an eyebrow at me. “Starling is grass roots?”

  “Well, it’s wheat,” I said. Their chuckles encouraged me. “This is the big tour,” I continued. “All the performers want to do Starling, Treehern, Portage la Prairie. After that, it’s all downhill. You might as well do Vegas.”

  They burst into laughter, and it rolled over me like applause. A blinding flash lit up the dusty hall as Daniel came in. He walked up suspiciously, as if we were laughing at him, and tossed the tape at me. I caught it and gallantly handed it to the woman. The others crowded around to see.

  “Blue Prairie, Daniel Desrochers,” the woman read out loud, then looked up at me. “He’s your brother? I thought you said your name was Friesen.”

  My stomach clenched, the way it had when I’d first seen the tape at Christmas.

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name,” Daniel started. “It –”

  He was going to say “sounds better” but I cut him off. “There…there’s another Friesen who records…jazz.” This was a real lie. A wave of nausea swept through me. “We don’t want to confuse anyone.”

  The tape was working magic. The cover of Blue Prairie was a black-and-white art photo of Daniel with the Fender in a wheat field, his face so shadowed by his hat you couldn’t tell how old he was, the field around him tinted blue. I had to hand it to Kruse – the package was professional.

  “Now, that doesn’t look a thing like Kurt,” the woman said with a self-conscious laugh; I could tell she was impressed. The nephew was watching us hopefully now, but I was facing the farmer.

  I knew the moment had come. Ask, Jens. Ask for the sale.

  “I think my brother could put on a good show for you,” I blurted. I could have kicked myself – it was a statement, not a close. The farmer looked Daniel up and down, still cautious. The words bubbled up nervously inside me — how Daniel could play anything, how thrilled Jake would be — but I bit it back. After the pitch you have to wait for the swing.

  “We couldn’t afford to pay him, not really,” the farmer said at last.

  “For Jake,” I said, “Daniel would be happy to do it.”

  By the time I reached the sidewalk I was flying. I’d done it! We had a real booking. I felt the first rush of hope I’d had in a long time. I decided to take Daniel to the Times Change, get a coffee and make a plan.

  “Well, thanks a lot,” my brother said. “I love doing shows for nothing, especially for shit-boot farmers who wouldn’t know good music if it bit them on the ass.”

  My mood hit the ground and didn’t even bounce. “What’s the matter with you? Weren’t you listening? Everybody in town will turn up for this old guy. We’ll have a captive audience. And if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have that. You’d be on the sidewalk with your case open, begging.”

  “It’s busking,” he muttered, hands in his pockets. “It’s an art.”

  I’d never had the stomach to watch my brother do it. It always struck me as…desperate.

  “Well, not in Starling,” I said. “Believe me, a freebie at the Legion is the best you’re going to get, tonight or maybe any night. You’re lucky, you know that?”

  I was gearing up for a lecture — how ungrateful he was, how he never appreciated what people did for him. Desrochers was still lodged inside me like a bullet. My brother didn’t care at all about the only thing that mattered to me.

  “Yeah, I’m lucky, Jens,” Daniel said quietly. “You’re so smooth. Everybody likes you and…you can get anything. But you know, you never even told them I was any good.”

  He sounded so hungry. It took me a moment to speak, but when I managed it, my voice was light.

  “I did, too. Didn’t you hear me in there? I said you could put on a good show.” I pushed open the door to the Times Change. “Buy me some pie, Daniel?”

  NINE

  We got great table service in the cafe. The waitress was about Daniel’s age and she came by every few minutes to check my coffee.

  “Refills are free,” she said, grinning at me. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail but strands had come loose, brushing her pink cheeks.

  Daniel was watching me, dark-eyed. At another table, a group of girls – probably the waitress’s friends – were watching, too.

  “What do I get if I pay for it?” I teased, loud enough for them to hear. They whooped into sudden laughter. The waitress twisted around, scarlet, to make faces at them. My brother looked away.

  When it was time to leave, she gave me the bill and hurried back to her giggling friends. At the bottom she’d drawn a heart with a happy face on it, and written, Have a great day! My name is Marcy. Come back SOON.

  I passed it to Daniel with a smile – he was paying. He glanced at it, then crumpled it up. He left the money on the table.

  Out on the sidewalk, I couldn’t resist elbowing him. “You didn’t leave Marcy much of a tip.”

  “Leave your
own goddamn tip,” Daniel muttered.

  The man at the Petro-Canada service station told us there was a rest stop about three kilometers beyond Starling. It turned out to be a half-moon of gravel with two picnic tables on it.

  Daniel kicked at the ground, scattering stones. “This is nuts. Why can’t we sleep in the truck?”

  “Because we’d have to unload it to make room,” I said irritably. “You want your guitars to sit out on the highway all night, for whoever wants to pick them up?”

  The truth was, with the Fender gone, I could have squeezed out a narrow aisle through the stuff, enough room for Daniel and me to lie with our backs touching, or to sleep like spoons, the way we did when we were really small and there was a thunderstorm. Lots of kids don’t like thunder but for Daniel, who was even frightened of that burger bear’s tuba, it was the end of the world. I remember him pulled in against me, his breath on my back, wincing at every crack and boom. I was always on the outside edge, so that whatever horror was coming in that terrible sound would have to get me first.

  But we weren’t those kids anymore. I would sooner have died than sleep with my brother.

  We’d passed a copse of trees on the way out, and I drove back to it. There wasn’t a farmhouse as far as I could see but I knew we were on somebody’s land. I felt a guilty pang as Daniel and I unloaded, but if we set up the tent by the picnic tables, in full view from the highway, it might not be there when we got back from the Legion.

  The tent was an army green that blended into the brush quite well, even though most of it was still leafless. Setting up camp took us an hour and a half and I was glad – anything to keep my mind from running anxiously to the night ahead.

  I was as nervous as hell. I wanted to get to the Legion early, to meet people as they came in. I had a big job ahead of me – there’s a difference between what people will clap for and what they’ll buy.

  Remember FAB, I told myself. It was a buzzword that meant Features, Advantages, Benefits – a progression to lead the customer through to the sale. “It doesn’t matter what you’re selling” Sy said. “Cars or toasters or whatever. Product is product. The process is the same.”

  My product was playing to the trees. He’d lugged the acoustic out of the truck and was turned away from me, the amp under him as a seat. He wasn’t really playing, only strumming, hard bursts over the strings, his left hand leaping up and down the neck of the guitar. It wasn’t completely tuneless but it was aggravating. He had a show to do tonight. Why didn’t he practice a song or something?

  Don’t fight, I told myself. Just make dinner.

  I dug out a large can of ravioli and started fooling around with the propane stove. I’d never used one before but how tough could it be? Crouched in front of it, I kept easing open the fuel gauge and tried match after match until I was cursing under my breath. What could be wrong? Dad said he’d filled the tank.

  The violent strumming was getting to me.

  “What is that noise?” I said.

  “They’re power chords,” he said, not missing one.

  “Well, it sucks. Why don’t you think about what you’re going to play tonight?” Maybe the line from the tank to the burner was clogged.

  “I am. This is how I think.”

  I cranked the throttle wide open. “Most people think with their brains, Daniel,” I said, and thrust the match into the burner.

  The gust of ignition blew me backwards onto my ass.

  There was a half-second of silence, then Daniel began to laugh. Then I began to laugh. We blurted it out at the same instant: ”Scheisskopf!”

  We sounded so much like Dad that it set us off again, giggling like drunks.

  It was Daniel who suggested that if we ate out of the can we wouldn’t have to wash any dishes.

  It was nearly seven o’clock when he crawled into the tent with his performance clothes to get changed. He’d always been shy like that. I emptied out one of my duffle bags in the truck and filled it with tapes. I made sure I had over a hundred, but in my heart I only needed to sell twenty. Salesmen have magic numbers and tonight this one was mine. If I could sell twenty tapes, that would be a sign – that this would work, that I could do it.

  I changed my sweatshirt to something neater. “When you stand in front of a customer, you have to look like you don’t need the money,” Sy said. Daniel came up, denim shirt hanging outside his jeans, leather vest open. But I didn’t say a word. He had a show to do and the better he played, the more tapes we’d sell. He was my product and I had to pump him up.

  “This is great,” I said as we drove to Starling. “This is a real chance and they’re dying to hear you. Don’t worry about anything. You just get out there and play your best and I’ll do everything else.”

  It was full darkness now and I could feel new energy running through me. There is something exciting about the prairie at night. The surrounding fields are oceans of black, magnifying every headlight. The storefronts of a place like Starling can look like Times Square.

  The front of the Legion was already lined with vehicles, so we parked farther down the street. I didn’t mind – cars meant customers. I was eager to get started when Daniel grabbed his fedora off the dashboard.

  “For Pete’s sake, don’t wear the hat,” I snapped.

  “Why not?”

  “Because…it’s strange. People want you to look like them.”

  “But I’m not like them,” he said defiantly.

  “Couldn’t you fake it for just one night?”

  He swung around to look at me, the bones of his lean face strong in the light of the cafe.

  “I love this hat. It’s my signature. If people don’t like it, that’s their problem.”

  “Oh, that attitude is going to sell tapes.”

  Daniel stuck the fedora firmly on his head. “Not my job, Jens. You just said so. All I’ve got to do is play. Well, this is how I play.”

  He pushed out. I thumped the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. But as I unloaded the equipment, I said, “At least tuck in your shirt. You look like a poster boy for Child Find.”

  He didn’t speak to me the long walk up to the hall.

  The Legion was busy but not yet full. The walls were scalloped with streamers—green and red, orange and black, leftovers from both Christmas and Halloween. Five men were at the snooker table, two teams plus one grizzled consultant, and the tables were either clustered or completely empty. No one sat alone. There were wives and mothers scattered through the crowd, but this was a place of men. Work pants and blue jean jackets, smoke and beer.

  Word must have gotten around that we were coming. When we walked in, the room seemed to dip, conversations changed direction. Everyone looked, yet I knew it wasn’t at me. I was just a stranger. Daniel was a kid, with two guitars. I grinned hello to every face that would meet mine. Daniel strode up to the bar as if the place was empty.

  The farmer we’d met that afternoon was named Allan Rutley. He was leaning against the padded ledge of the bar, twirling a toothpick anxiously in his mouth. I shouldered past Daniel to get to him first.

  “Well, here we are,” I said. “Hope we’re not late.”

  “No,” Rutley said. He was staring at the two-foot amplifier I was struggling to balance. Daniel promptly set down his guitars at the table closest to the wall, shrugged off his jacket and began setting up.

  “Could I get you to move?” he said to a nearby table of three men. “I need some room here.”

  I heard the grumble, and the discontented scraping of chairs. Rutley glanced back at them.

  “You…you did a great job with the decorations,” I said quickly as I set down the amp. “Jake is going to be thrilled.”

  “Look,” Rutley said, stepping closer. “How loud is he going —”

  “Do you have a microphone?” Daniel cut in.

  The man looked at him as if he were a bug. “No. Why would we?”

  Daniel snorted, soft but unmistakable. “Right. Why would you.�
�� He turned away, too fast. Rutley raised an eyebrow at me. I could feel the sweat gathering under my arms and around my collar.

  “Allan,” I said, easing him away, “let me buy you a beer.”

  I left some of my gas money on the bar, then swept in beside Daniel, as if I was helping him.

  “Get a personality,” I hissed, “or I’ll drive your ass back home tonight, I swear to God.”

  I couldn’t see his face but he hesitated; the brim of the fedora quivered.

  I built a pyramid of cassettes for display on the table, and took some in my hand. As Daniel slung the strap of the electric guitar over his shoulder and began to tune up, I looked at the crowd.

  Cold calls, any salesman will tell you, are the hardest. It takes guts to start at zero, come face to face with someone who didn’t ask for what you have to sell. There weren’t a hundred people in the Legion, not even fifty yet, but I could tell by the backs and shoulders turned against us, these were all cold calls. I took a deep breath and waded in.

  “Hi, how are you tonight?” I began over and over as I moved through the room. I tried to work in the important things quickly: the Friesen name, the fact that we were from Ile-des-Sapins, and that we were doing this for Jake.

  “Would you know him if you saw him?” one woman asked point-blank. The truth paralyzed me for a few seconds before I managed to laugh nervously and tell her it was the thought that counted. I tried not to slink away.

  Every table I stopped at, I showed Daniel’s tape. Some people glanced at it in curiosity but most had only one question: Was he old enough to be in here? I had to keep explaining that as long as he didn’t drink and as long as I was with him as a guardian, it was legal. But that wasn’t the same as welcome. The magic twenty tapes seemed as impossible as seven hundred.

  One man in a crisp white shirt and a heavy gold watch leaned over the snooker table and sank the pink with a decisive crack. “Does your brother play that thing or does he just tune it?” he said.

  At that instant the room burst into sound, electric vibration, notes running wild, not up and down the scale but around it and through it. I looked. Everyone did. I’d never heard this song before, not on one of Daniel’s CDs, not floating up through my bedroom vent. It was pure instrumental – I couldn’t imagine words keeping up with it. If this was R & B, it was that music on drugs, blues at 150 kilometers an hour.